Should Patients Get Direct Access to Their Laboratory Test Results? – — JAMA

The authors of this article have done great work in this area, showing that “between 8% and 26% of abnormal test results, including those suspicious for malignancy, are not followed up in a timely manner.”

While they also feel that

To develop best practices in this area, the potential consequences and benefits of this approach should be subjected to rigorous evaluation.

It’s worth noting that 22.4 million test results were reviewed by patients online in 2011, just at Kaiser Permanente. This is an increase of 14 % from 2010.

epatientdave This got me thinking about whether JAMA would entertain another editorial entitled, “The patient should have direct access to their lab results,” co-written by a physician and a patient.

All of this assumes that the editorial above will really have any impact on the change that has already happened. I guess this is one of those things that we can attribute to social media – the attenuation of the signal from the peer-reviewed world,